Bone Cage

Bone Cage

Winner of the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, Bone Cage explores the desolation and desperate struggle of a group of young adults striving to rise above the pillaged landscape of rural Nova Scotia. Through dark poetry and wry humour, Banks creates a world where all people are trapped in cages of their own construction–as inescapable as their own bodies.

Catherine Banks is coming! Join us opening week for a series of events involving this award-winning playwright. More details here>>

Director’s Notes
When I began working on Bone Cage someone in the auditions asked me what I thought the play was about. I answered that Catherine Banks is exploring the impact on the psyche of a man who regularly commits environmental terrorism. It’s a hard life. Trapped in a destructive pattern of destroying the earth. Killing the animals whose home it is.

This life is not for the weak. It changes you. You can’t talk about your feelings. So you bury them deep in your soul along with your dreams. You guard them because your life depends on it. A moment of vulnerability and someone will exploit it. You need armor.

So you drink.

You drink to deny the truth. You just spent this twelve-hour shift tearing apart what took hundreds of years to build. When you get out of the machine a wall of silence confronts you. It is the absence of life. You wander around looking for any sign of being. Anything. But all you find are the dead and dying. So you put your armor back on.

You go around beating people up because at least that’s a choice you have. Some control. Otherwise you feel you have none. You hold out for that last vestige of salvation: getting out. You want to leave so bad you can taste it. You can see it… just… almost there… almost in your grasp… almost…

Politics aside, with Bone Cage, Catherine Banks has demonstrated such a clear understanding of what it means to be human. To be driven so far by obsessive wants and needs that you can feel yourself dying.

The bird of death is a lot of things. The reckless pursuit of wants and desires is possibly the greatest bird making its nest in the pit of our collective stomachs.

Thank you for being here. Truly. It has been an honour and a privilege to work amongst some of the brightest, talented and most dedicated individuals I have had the good fortune to collaborate with. Thank you to the team and to Doug and Jeremy for trusting me with such a magnificent – if brutally honest – portrayal of humans being themselves.

And remember, as the Buddha once said, “You only lose what you cling to”.